Chapter 108 Repayment
The debt collection platform kept sending text messages, one after another. Fang Zhuo replied to the other party with "Don't urge me, I'll pay later," which finally calmed down the phone a little.
The original novel doesn't describe the male protagonist's adoptive father much. For most of his appearances, he's portrayed as a silent, resilient, and somewhat profound figure. His relationship with the male protagonist perfectly embodies the typical "coquettish son" trope found in online literature.
"The most traditional Chinese father and son are enemies as well as ruler and subject. Only when the father is seriously ill and lying in bed are they father and son."
"As the only son in his family, the protagonist, Long Aotian, never had the courage to sit down and have a drink with his father since he was a child."
"What he feared most in his life was his father's deep gaze; it was the thing he dreaded most in his life. Similarly, a stern word of praise from his father was what he longed for most in his life."
This traditional, old-fashioned father probably made the biggest decision of his life by exchanging a divine embryo for a magical fetus. Apart from taking out a loan, he probably didn't make any other enemies.
Fang Zhuo opened more than twenty microloan apps one by one, sitting by the bathtub and browsing through the original owner's loan details and chat history over the past few years, intending to understand the original owner's original life trajectory.
The growth of a "celestial embryo" requires the impetus of cultivation. The faster the cultivation increases, the faster it grows. The original owner initially gritted his teeth and spent two months' salary to buy his eldest son an upgrade magic artifact. Then he took out an online loan from a food delivery platform to buy two boxes of instant noodles.
The several tens of dollars he received out of nowhere immediately relieved his financial burden and opened the door to a new world for him.
Having tasted the benefits, he later resorted to online loans to buy even his daily necessities.
When the snowball reached over 80,000 yuan, the original owner's salary was no longer enough to cover the monthly repayments.
He could only confess to his family. In the end, his eighty-year-old grandmother sold their house in their hometown and helped him pay back 60,000 spirit stones.
However, the original owner left more than 10,000 "tails" without telling his family.
He thought he would soon be able to raise the immortal fetus, get a promotion and a raise, and switch to a better sect. At that time, paying back the 10,000 yuan would be a piece of cake.
But the reality check came very quickly; the magic artifact, worth over eight thousand spirit stones, only helped the immortal embryo's bone age increase by two years.
The second confession brought an even bigger storm to the family. The original owner's grandfather was forced to commit suicide to collect insurance money. In the end, not only did he not receive the insurance money, but his grandmother also fell seriously ill from grief. In the end, relatives raised money everywhere and only managed to get a meager tens of thousands of spirit stones.
The ever-increasing financial strain and medical bills completely overwhelmed the original owner of this body. After his grandmother passed away, he could no longer hold on and chose to drown himself in the bathtub by holding his breath.
After reading through these chat logs, Fang Zhuo sighed softly.
There were no large purchases in this 390,000 yuan debt; each transaction consisted of daily necessities ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan. In addition, most of the debt was due to high interest rates from microloan apps.
It can be said that this ending was already set when the original owner chose to use the secret technique to nurture the immortal fetus; it was just a matter of time.
He paid off the entire debt with a few taps on his phone, and the debt collectors from the microloan platform immediately sent him several messages:
"Congratulations on your fortune! Our platform has just launched a new loan model. For every person you refer who takes out a loan, you'll receive a 5% commission on the loan amount. Contact us anytime if you're interested..."
Fang Zhuo immediately blocked the number, uninstalled all loan apps, and turned off the credit card function on food delivery and group-buying apps.
After confirming that there were no other debts on his credit report, he looked around at his surroundings.
The bathroom was extremely cramped; to take a shower, you had to stand in the bathtub, which was next to a dirty squat toilet.
Pushing open the door, the outside room was completely visible.
The room was only about 30 square meters, so the male protagonist, who was arrogant and domineering, had to sleep on the floor. Various odds and ends were piled up in the corner of the room, and a large number of crudely made magical artifacts and strange runes were placed on the iron shelf.
If her clothes weren't still wet, Fang Zhuo would have loved to leave this house without looking back.
He opened his storage ring, used the shared space function to retrieve a suit from the villa in the entertainment industry dimension, and then went into the bathroom for a quick shower.
He put the watch back on his wrist, went out, hailed a taxi, and arrived at the nearest five-star hotel: "The penthouse presidential suite."
The receptionist smiled apologetically: "I'm sorry, sir, the top three floors of our hotel are reserved year-round for Foundation Establishment cultivators. Why don't you check your cultivation level on the universal instrument first?"
Fang Zhuo didn't look up; he was typing on his phone to send the hotel address to his adopted son.
"Add more money, triple the amount."
A hint of surprise flashed in the waiter's eyes, and he pretended to operate the computer for a couple of seconds:
"Sir, what a coincidence! Our hotel's multi-function instrument has been malfunctioning recently. Since we can't test your cultivation level right now, I'll register you as a Foundation Establishment early stage cultivator and take you to the top-floor suite."
After spending over 20,000 spirit stones, Fang Zhuo sat on the sofa in the suite for nearly an hour before Long Aotian finally arrived.
The person standing at the entrance was clearly a ten-year-old child, but he was less than 1.2 meters tall, dark-skinned and thin, and at first glance looked like a monkey that could only jump on the railings of a scenic spot.
At this moment, the phrase "Qi Refining Level 2" floated above Long Aotian's head. This progress was quite outstanding among his peers, since most ordinary people would only reach around Qi Refining Level 6 in their entire lives. However, for a celestial embryo summoned by a secret technique, the progress to Qi Refining Level 2 was obviously somewhat slow.
"Dad, look, I picked this up from the trash can in the cafeteria of the high school next door. Some rich high school students buy meals with spiritual energy. These are the chicken bones and bread crumbs they left over. Let's clean them up and eat them. I'll make you some soup with the bones, otherwise the spiritual energy will dissipate."
Long Aotian emptied his backpack, revealing a transparent plastic bag inside. Even from a distance, he could smell a faint sour odor.
The bag contained bones that had been thoroughly sucked clean, along with a considerable amount of unidentifiable fragments. While some spiritual energy did remain, it was so faint as to be negligible.
"Oh right, isn't today Wednesday? Dad, why aren't you going to work?"
The child's smile slowly faded, and as he looked at the lavishly decorated hotel room, his expression gradually turned to fear and unease.
“Dad, don’t think like that. Life will get better little by little. When my bone age increases by two more years, I’ll be twelve and I can start working. I can even take out small loans to support us… I can’t live without you…”
This son is quite sensible. Fang Zhuo patted the boy's hair a couple of times and found that the ends of the child's hair were so greasy that they could be used to fry vegetables. He then pushed the child towards the bathroom.
"Fang Lieyang, I won't die even if you die. I'm going out to take care of some work matters later. Stay in the hotel and don't wander around. If you get hungry, just ring the bell to order food, and someone will bring it to your room. Go take a shower first."
Fang Lieyang scratched his ear, feeling that his surname didn't sound so familiar anymore, and that his father sounded a bit sarcastic today.
But the unease quickly dissipated, and he was immediately distracted by other things:
"Dad, what about our old house? The rent isn't due yet, isn't it a bit wasteful? Besides, you've been saving up some scrap metal with spiritual energy in that room, and you can't just throw that away... I'll go tidy up the room later."
Fang Zhuo got a headache just hearing about that room; he strongly suspected that everything in it might have been crawled over by the twin-tailed bugs.
The scrap steel the child mentioned is obviously not good for his health; it might even be some kind of radioactive material emitting high levels of radiation.
"No, I don't want any of it. I'll buy it later."
After much persuasion, Fang Zhuo finally managed to get the child into the bathroom. He rubbed his temples and watched as the waiter disposed of the bag of food waste on the floor before leaving.
The original owner's monthly salary was only a little over four thousand yuan. He worked as an outsourced inspector in an outsourced factory of a subsidiary of a large factory.
In addition to the online debts, Fang Zhuo also has about a dozen offline IOUs, most of which were borrowed from fellow workers. These debts add up to more than 40,000 spirit stones.
He went to the factory to complete his resignation procedures and, while he was there, paid off the dozen or so debts.
With a "beep," the employee ID card was swiped on the gate at the factory entrance, but the machine did not respond for a long time.
He opened his phone and sent a message to his team leader: [The turnstile won't open]
After waiting at the door for at least twenty minutes, a middle-aged bald man walked over, rubbing his bald head and cursing. He immediately launched into a tirade of complaints:
"I already told you, don't use your own company name on outsourced work, otherwise the system will automatically alert you and deduct your performance bonus. Just wait for the regular employees to open the door and sneak in. It's such a hassle."
"I already told the leaders that in the future, we should try to recruit high-achieving students who are at least at the seventh level of Qi Refining. It's not like our sect can't find people. If we only recruit lowly workers like you who can't understand human language, I'll be annoyed to death every day."
"This is a one-time exception. Buy me a drink of Brain Power, and I won't tell the minister about this."
Fang Zhuo didn't reply. He saw the bald man skillfully lead him to the convenience store in the factory area and take down more than ten bottles labeled "Brain Power" from the shelf in one go.
Fang Zhuo had seen this drink in the original book. It was said to refresh the mind and improve the concentration of working people. A bottle cost about two or three spirit stones.
The drinks themselves are not expensive, but they put a lot of strain on the heart. After drinking a few bottles, you can't fall asleep at all, and can compress a normal nine hours of sleep into two or three hours.
Before he could say anything, a coworker from the same production line jogged over and said, "Team leader, let me settle your bill."
Fang Zhuo had seen this coworker in the original owner's contact list. The coworker's name was Wu Di, and he was one of the original owner's few friends. He had previously lent the original owner tens of thousands of yuan of his savings to help him in an emergency.
He stood aside and watched his coworker gulp down four or five bottles of brain-boosting pills, and then take out a handful of pills from his pocket and give them to him.
Fang Zhuo waved his hand, refusing to take it. Seeing this, the team leader beside him made a sarcastic remark:
"Don't tell me you don't have money to buy it. Brain-boosting pills only cost a few dollars. You should take out a loan to buy them. You have money to buy clothes but not money to buy supplements??"
"Forget it, forget it. You're short-sighted. I was originally planning to try to get you an internal recruitment spot once you reached the seventh level of Qi Refining, but if you insist on slacking off, there's nothing I can do."
Wu Di smiled apologetically for him, pulling him towards the production line while whispering, "Fang Zhuo, what's wrong? Didn't you go through a lot of trouble a few years ago to switch jobs from a subsidiary of Zhongchang to work as an outsourcer?"
"Our company has such a great platform. In just seven years, you've already advanced from the fifth to the sixth level of Qi Refining. If you drink more Brain-Boosting Elixir and reduce your sleep to less than two hours a day, it might just be a matter of time before you reach the seventh level. After switching to internal outsourcing, your salary will increase by at least two thousand."
"Didn't you say you were saving money for baby formula? Let's work together. I'll be waiting for you in the company's common study room after I get off work at 12:30 tonight."
Fang Zhuo can now understand why Huo Xiaoyuan blew up the company's factory in his second week at work.
He opened his phone and ordered a flying sword with the highest level of authority online, planning to leave this unlucky place as soon as he paid off his debts.
He hadn't even sat on the production line for two minutes when he beckoned to the team leader and said, "I want to resign. Please approve the resignation."
The bald man strolled over slowly, leaned against the cardboard box, and sneered, "You? Quit your job? You're not going to support your family? Don't joke with me."
He opened his phone and saw a process information message lying in his pending list.
The bald man shook his head and sneered, "Go outside and ask which sect can give you such good resources? Do you know that after you resign, you will be blacklisted by all the subsidiaries under the entire sect? I'm telling you right now, once you leave this door today, you will never find a better factory in your life."
"Xiao Fang, we can go home after working a full sixteen hours on the production line, and we can even reserve the sect's public cultivation room between 12 and 6. How much money do you have to afford to go through all this?"
Fang Zhuo took out a bottle filled with spirit stones from his storage ring and said indifferently, "Richer than you."
The moment he took the bottle out, the eyes of his coworkers around him seemed to be drawn to it like a magnet, and everyone's gaze automatically became fixed on the bottle.
Their team leader only earns a little over 8,000 yuan a month, and most of their salary is spent on various energy drinks and buying magical artifacts, leaving them with very little.
Many people even take out loans to work, hoping to improve their skills and become full-time employees or switch jobs to factories under a larger sect.
The bottle contained at least tens of thousands of condensed spirit stones, equivalent to several years' worth of their savings.
At this point, no one cared where the spirit stones came from; everyone around gathered around.
Fang Zhuo took out a stack of IOUs and said to everyone, "I will repay all the previous debts three times over. Please take turns and don't push."
Having spent less than ten minutes in the factory, he had already fully understood the kind of life the original owner usually led—working sixteen hours a day in a factory run by the sect, and then spending his own money to drink brain-boosting pills and cultivate like crazy at night. It was truly remarkable that the original owner could endure it for so many years.
His fellow workers were able to lend him money even under such difficult circumstances, so it's normal for them to repay three times the amount now.
Wu Di nudged his arm and said, "Brother, is this money from a legitimate source? Don't sell yourself out, and don't be fooled by all that nonsense online. There's a reason why people have two kidneys; you won't live long with only one."
Fang Zhuo: "...Don't worry, all organs are intact."
Watching the gleaming spirit stones being distributed expressionlessly, the bald man grinned, wanting to interject with something.
When did this kid become so rich? He's made a fortune but doesn't even share it with him.
If the other party were to work hard to save up more money on top of these 100,000 or so spirit stones, it wouldn't be impossible for them to reach the seventh level of Qi Refining within three years. However, it seems that the other party doesn't care much about these spirit stones.
...Could it be that this kid has even more spirit stones in his storage ring?
Thinking about this, he regretted it so much that he wanted to go back twenty minutes. If he had known earlier that the laborer could pull out so much money at once, he would have served him very well, afraid that the man would run away.
It's no use saying anything now; he can only clench his fists and stand aside watching the tens of thousands of spirit stones being distributed.
If only I had borrowed money back then, the investment returns would have been more stable than buying cryptocurrency.
The bald man, thinking this, was about to step forward to make amends for his earlier mistake, but just as he was about to cautiously try to get closer to the workers, he heard someone shout from the crowd:
"My goodness, how come there's a high-level flying sword parked at the window?"
"That can't be right. Did a leader come to inspect? There can't be only one."
"Bullshit, even the swords used by leaders during inspections aren't this good. Look at the light on the blade. This is the new 31PRO extended and thickened greatsword that the Weapon Refining Sect just launched last quarter. It costs at least three million spirit stones."
"Is our factory going to be acquired by the Weapon Refining Sect...?"
"What are you thinking? What good would it do to acquire this lousy factory? Even if we were to make an acquisition, we would definitely go for the high-end production lines of the main factory."
"Don't push, don't push! I want to take a picture too. I've never seen this sword before, it's so cool!"
Half the production line workers crowded around the window. Baldy finally found his place, waving his arms and shouting, "What are you all running for? The security cameras are watching! No one is allowed to leave their workstations! Fines will start in five minutes. I'm going to report this to the monitoring system now."
Fang Zhuo looked up at the bald man.
The other person walked over as if seeking credit, took out two bottles of brain-boosting medication from his pocket, and placed them on the table with a smile: "Xiao Fang, feel free to leave your seat. Don't worry, I'm in charge of this production line."
Fang Zhuo waved his hand: "Keep it for yourself."
After paying off all the money and canceling all the IOUs, he steadily stepped onto his flying sword and used the automatic navigation function on the original text in the system.
Shortly after his figure disappeared through the window, the workers on the production line began whispering to each other again:
"Wu Di, you're best friends with him. How did he suddenly become so rich? That's terrifying! He just bought a flying sword worth over three million yuan like that? He usually walks to and from get off work."
"I don't know either. Maybe he's actually a rich kid who's just hiding his identity and working temporarily at our factory for a few years..."
"I'm so envious of you. He just sent you an extra 10,000 spirit stones, right? I think he even wrote down his new contact information for you. Don't forget me when you become rich and powerful."
"My heart is bleeding with regret. If I had known that Xiao Fang would come to distribute money today, I would have lent him more. Among us, Wu Di, you lent the most. I remember you lent more than 30,000 spirit stones in one go. You're so smart."
Wu Di scratched his head: "When I borrowed the money, I didn't think about all this."
"What do you think Fang Zhuo went to do?"
"I don't know, he's probably enjoying life. He can afford to spend over three million to buy a flying sword, he must have made a fortune... He couldn't possibly be building a new sect, haha."
Fang Zhuo was on his way to a medicated drug factory.
The original book contains many undiscovered cultivation geniuses, and he plans to start with the one who is the most capable and also the most regrettable.
There's still time; that person probably hasn't had sex reassignment surgery yet.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
